Picture a tree and shrub shaded melee of subtropical plants, cacti and flowers, laced with native palm trees, and you'll get an idea for this modest "backyard walk" at a charming little Audobon nature center. I particularly admired that this center had so much life about it, and yet was not a huge facility at all. As always, I used a cheap dollar store throwaway camera, whose limitations help define what pictures I post.
Above is a picture of the trail, on which you can see the fleeing chachalaca bird, a huge native bird similar in size to a roadrunner, but quite different in look and sound.
I liked the way that flowers were abundant, but the feel was palm/fern/cactus/desert tree, a wonderful Rio Grande amalgam of native plants.
My photos of the great kiskadee did not come out, but do picture a huge yellow-breased flycatcher, just eluding your camera's eye.
I liked the way that the butterflies were everywhere, in so many colors, in so many places.
Weslaco is just an ordinary town of 25,000 a few dozen miles inland of the coast, just north of the border. It's one of dozens of little towns where they realize what treasures their birds and butterflies truly are. I think my own neighborhood, and perhaps any neighborhood, could set up something similar, and find a way to delight visitors this way.
I want to go back someday, binoculars in hand, and just luxuriate in the color and flitting wings.